With the aging of many of the structures built within the last 50 years, it is becoming more and more important for property managers to be able to monitor the structural integrity in order to maintain acceptable levels of safety. Current methods, usually a simple visual inspection, are insufficient for accurate assessment of the structural integrity since most of the real indicators of a potential failure are not easily assessable via visual inspection. For example, it is not possible to determine if the stress on a particular support member is changing over time with a visual inspection. In addition, even if a person conducting the inspection could see the stress changes over time, most of the support members are not readily accessible for visual inspection.
Further, catastrophic events such as fire, weather or explosions can cause structural integrity failures. First responders are currently also limited to visual inspection to determine structural integrity. They have no way of knowing the status of interior support members. This could lead to improper decisions and could result in loss of time and potentially increase the risk of injury to the persons entering the structure.